It’s amazing how much life has changed over the last few years. I have experienced a monumental shift in perspective. I’ve come to define church by its members and not its location. I am no longer employed as a professional clergy. I see myself as a small part of a greater body.
I was so inspired by the role of pastor I decided to become a psychologist. And even through the schooling phase of life I’m discovering labels have little to do with spiritual identity. I’ve got no desire to be a James Dobson, Bible answer-man type. Wherever we land, I want to serve Jesus humbly. I want to listen carefully to what others are saying so I don’t mischaracterize them. I want to represent the spirit of Christ by loving Father with all I am.
I’ve learned that outside institutional control, the smile covering rage, and the dark fog of “truth” is freedom. And in glorious freedom is another kind of monster. If you don’t have a dictator pushing everyone around you must begin to listen to Father. Outside the box is the freedom to give yourself freely to Father through the Son.
From Frank Viola’s What is an Organic Church:
By “organic church,” I mean a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grass roots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (opposed to pastor-to-pew services), non-hierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering.
I want to offer this kind of relationship to others and participate in the simplicity of relational faith. I still feel a dull ache of institutional church loss but I’m glad for the promise of relational life. And in this phase of life it feels only like a promise. I suppose if Abraham can do it, so can we. I’m no Abraham but I can follow his lead and live by faith.
